


Smashed

by tacroy



Series: unfinished Ghostbusters fic [1]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Drug Use, F/F, Marijuana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25798279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tacroy/pseuds/tacroy
Summary: unfinished!With a herculean amount of effort, Erin collected a notebook and pen out of the desk in her bedroom and wrote: “being high is like having feelings but actually someone’s whispering them to you,” because she knew it was extremely important to record that thought for posterity.
Relationships: Erin Gilbert/Jillian Holtzmann
Series: unfinished Ghostbusters fic [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1871635
Kudos: 2





	Smashed

Erin had this friend—no, really, she did—named Anna who worked at Lawrence in Berkeley. Anna came to a conference at NYU a year ago, along with half the other guests of honor, and, on the last night of the conference, bought out the contents of the liquor store down the street from Erin’s place. Then they brought those contents to Erin’s apartment and got so smashed they couldn’t even remember the formula for mass-energy equivalence. ****

Most of this came back to Erin while she stood in front of her open freezer, staring down at a square tinfoil package sealed in a plastic bag. Mayra from Stanford, she recalled, had said something about Lee from MIT using Erin’s oven, but Erin had been distracted by Hannah from Oxford dancing by with her shirt unbuttoned to her navel. Later, while Erin was puking with Philippe from the Sorbonne in her bathroom, Erin smelled baked goods, and hunched over the trash can again, wishing she had gotten to the toilet before Philippe. Even later, Anna rescued them and swaddled them in nine blankets on the couch, where they huddled together for warmth (and jockeyed a bit for position in front of the trash bin they’d been left for emergencies) and watched people shift, very gradually, from being blind drunk to high as kites. ****

Erin had slept with Philippe the next night, and it had been very mediocre, even though he was extremely nice and had developed a lovely new theory about time dilation that would go on to earn him a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2038. The thing was, she’d had a moment while Philippe was unbuttoning his shirt where she remembered Hannah from Oxford’s unbuttoned shirt, and the line of lace that cupped the lower curve of her white bra, and the way the light gleamed off her collarbones. And so Erin tried not to think about Philippe that often, because it led to thinking about Hannah, and that was a path Erin had closed off to herself years ago. ****

Erin was looking for vodka. She knew there was a little airplane bottle of Skyy somewhere in her freezer and she had delved past Amy’s frozen dinners and whole grain bagels and ice packs to the back, where there was a pint of Phish Food that had to have been two years old and a chunk of ice that turned out to be a handful of blueberries from that two month period when she made protein smoothies for breakfast. She found the Skyy tucked behind the tinfoil package. ****

She set the package in the middle of the counter and made herself a vodka martini around it, giving it space like it was a spider. She drank the martini. Generally she savored alcohol, because she allowed herself to have it so rarely. Erin’s most prized possession was her brain, and she did not often let it be purposefully impaired. She drank the martini so quickly she had to have a spoonful of peanut butter to stop the kitchen from wobbling quite so much. And the whole time she stared at the package. ****

Abby had said things like, “Four day weekend!” and “I don’t know about of any of you nerds, but I’m going to a spa where the only way to contact me will be if you kill all the bodyguards I’m hiring to protect me from having to talk to another human for ninety-two hours,” and “Please, please don’t call me even if the ghost of Paul Dirac walks out of the Natural History Museum and asks for me by name.” Patty hadn’t said anything—she’d sprinted out of the firehouse at Olympic speed and never looked back. Holtzmann had said, “Great, gives me some time to work on the surprise,” and refused to elaborate except for making obscene and hopefully unrelated gestures while wrinkling her nose and winking.  ****

Erin tossed back the last of the martini and reached for the package.

=

“The plan,” Holtzmann said, her voice very tinny and far away for someone speaking on what Erin knew for sure was a brand-new phone, “is to break in, seal off the floor with the demon thing, and set some Heptsprintzer traps. I really want to try them out. The lady at the EPA started crying after I told her about them.”

Erin realized she was blinking a lot. “Mm,” she said, looking very closely at one of her fingernails. Weird. It was wobbly. Wobbly wobbly. ****

“So can I?” Holtzmann said.  ****

Erin suspected that she had missed something. “What?”

“Can I come over?” ****

“No,” said Erin. All of her bones went watery and then icy. “Nonononooo, I’m fine, please don’t.” ****

“I wasn’t—what?” ****

“ Don’t come over, ” Erin hissed into the phone. “I’m fine. No ghosts here! I don’t need traps.” ****

“It sounds like I should come over.” ****

“You should super not come over! If you come over I am going to fall off this cliff!” Erin gestured at the edge of the couch, forgetting entirely that this call existed in audio only. ****

“I’m for sure coming over,” Holtzmann said. “Buzz me in. I’ll bring fries.” ****

“No,” Erin said, but to a dial tone.

=

Time ceased to have meaning. With a herculean amount of effort, Erin collected a notebook and pen out of the desk in her bedroom and wrote: “being high is like having feelings but actually someone’s whispering them to you,” because she knew it was extremely important to record that thought for posterity.

In the middle of thinking seriously about how bathroom tile patterns were just like postmodern art, the buzzer rang. ****

“Hello,” Erin said into the speaker. Then she actually pressed the button. “Hello again.” ****

“It’s me and I have a  _selection_ of fries.” ****

“Excellent and wonderful,” said Erin, instantly salivating. “Okay. I’m going to let you in. Probably.” She pushed some buttons. “Hello? Is the door working?” ****

“The hinges are on it,” Holtzmann said distantly. “Wait—yeah, it’s open, be right there.” ****

Erin unlocked the door and stood in front of it. She felt very tired. She leaned her forehead gently against the door. Was it metal? It felt like metal. Surely she didn’t have a metal door. Was it wood? What kind of wood? Was it particle board? What  _was_ particle board? Isn’t everything particle board, really?  ****

Then Holtzmann knocked on the door right at ear-level and Erin’s brain almost flew out of her skull. ****

She managed to let Holtzmann in even though her ears had fallen off and were laying somewhere behind the couch. Holtzmann said some things that Erin obviously couldn’t hear and then invaded her kitchen for plates and ketchup and mayo and ranch. Erin suddenly forgot that she had lost her ears because her nose started working and it was telling her that there were FRENCH FRIES. ****

About half an hour later, in some sort of fugue state brought on by oil and fat, she came to in her bedroom. She was fully clothed and all of the lights were on, but most interestingly, a pizza box was sitting on her stomach, along with a green Sharpie. On the pizza box she’d written:

_What if there was an alternate universe in which everything was the same except that there was a reason for_ __ la _ in the  _do re mi _ song?_


End file.
